been put forward is the most
practical, precise, and simple. Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at
nineteen years of age, first as king's lieutenant and as dauphin, and
afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and
his life in repairing the disasters arising from the wars of his
predecessors and preventing any repetition. No sovereign was ever more
resolutely pacific; he carried prudence even into the very practice of
war, as was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general
engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression
had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and the causes
which led to them. But without being a warrior, and without running any
hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies.
"Never was there king," said Edward III., "who handled arms less, and
never was there king who gave me so much to do." When the condition of
the kingdom was at the best, and more favorable circumstances led Charles
to believe that the day had come for setting France free from the cruel
conditions which had been imposed upon her by the treaty of Bretigny, he
entered without hesitation upon that war of patriotic reparation; and,
after the death of his two powerful enemies, Edward III. and the Black
Prince, he was still prosecuting it, not without chance of success, when
he himself died of the malady with which he had for a long while been
afflicted. At his death he left in the royal treasury a surplus of
seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days. Nor the labors of
government, nor the expenses of war, nor far-sighted economy had
prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and
studies, and from giving effectual protection to the men who devoted
themselves thereto. The University of Paris, notwithstanding the
embarrassments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his
good-will. "He was a great lover of wisdom," says Christine de Pisan,
"and when certain folks murmured for that he honored clerks so highly, he
answered, 'So long as wisdom is honored in this realm, it will continue
in prosperity; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.'" He
collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the
loyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the
library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his
personal attendant, G